Essential Link Building Strategies for Beginners

Here are some essential link building strategies and tips for beginners. I’ll cover the importance of real links, creating valuable content for your readers and link analysis tools.

The Difference between Real and Fake Links

Search engines are interested in real genuine links which provide valuable and relevant information to users. The overarching goal for your website is to provide good quality content which provides value to the reader.  

Fake links are usually purchased or were created by another incentive. They generally devalue the webpage they sit on. It’s not a recommended strategy and isn’t sustainable long term. Search engines penalise websites with fake links and paid links.

High Value Links

A high-value link has a number of characteristics. You’ll want to use keywords for the anchor text over the web address. This is also preferred by text readers for accessibility reasons.

It’s helpful to put yourself in your users’ shoes and think about solving their problems. You’ll also want to have a look at your competitors’ website, their content and their backlinks.

You might want to create links from forums, bulletin boards, social media accounts, profile pages and directories where you are adding value to your readers and community. Don’t forget to add your business to Google My Business, Bing Places for Business, Yellow Pages, Yelp and CitySearch. You might to also consider directory services like Advice Local, Synup, BrightLocal and Yext and specialist directories for your industry.

Must-Know Link Analysis Tools

Here are some of the best link analysis tools you can use:

• Ahrefs
• Majestic
• Moz SEO

Link building is an important component of search engine optimization for your website or blog. But make sure you focus on creating awesome high-quality content which is valuable to readers.